GHANA WITH THE WIND

If you use
Yahoo Messenger, or other Instant Messenger services, you may suddenly
get a "BUZZ" — calling your attention to a new message from someone
you have never heard of before. The person may have an interesting
"nickname" — something implying that they are looking for love…or
romance…what they are probably looking for is CASH.

It seems that I
am always getting "BUZZED" by lonely, romance seeking women from
Ghana. This is no big surprise. Read this alert from the United
States Government:

United States
citizens should be alert to attempts at fraud by persons claiming to live
in Ghana who profess friendship or romantic interest over the Internet.
Correspondents who quickly move to discussion of intimate matters could
well be the inventions of scammers. If they are after your money, eventually
they will ask for it.

Once a connection is made, the correspondent typically asks the U.S. citizen
to send money for living expenses, travel expenses, or "visa costs".
Sometimes, the correspondent notifies the American citizen that a close
family member has suffered an “accident” and is in need of
immediate monetary assistance to cover medical bills. Other variations
of this confidence scam have emerged of late, all with the principle goal
of soliciting money from the U.S. citizen. Several Americans have reported
losing thousands of dollars through such scams.

The anonymity of the Internet means that the U.S. citizen cannot be sure
of the real name, age, marital status, nationality, or even gender of
the correspondent. In the majority of cases reported to the embassy, the
correspondent turned out to be a fictitious persona created only to lure
the U.S. citizen into sending money.

– U.S. citizens may refer to http://uscis.gov for authoritative information
about the immigration process and the true costs involved.

– They may arrange to prepay for a plane ticket directly with the carrier
rather than wiring money for transportation to the traveler.

– If the correspondent provides an image of a purported U.S. visa as proof
of intention to travel, the U.S. citizen may contact the United States
Embassy in Accra at accrafpm@state.gov
to ascertain the validity of the visa.

Don’t
be a victim of on-line scammers. If you want to spend you money wisely
on the internet, spend it buying all my books!